Let's Yoga
Score: 70% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Konami Developer: Konami Media: Cartridge/1 Players: 1 Genre: Health and Exercise/ Edutainment/ Family
Graphics & Sound: If yoga is popular enough to be considered a sport, it deserves a place in the pantheon of sports games that traditionally drive big videogame sales. It makes sense when one considers that yoga has eclipsed spinning and kickboxing as the trendy exercise regimen for in-the-know women. What's puzzling is the fact that women form the minority of videogaming's demographic; do the creators of Let's Yoga hope to lure an audience, or do they know something we don't? From my perspective as a not-trendy, not-woman, and most definitely not-flexible person, Let's Yoga is a neat piece of software that doesn't quite work as a "game", but is still worth checking out if you have interest in yoga. The DS as an exercise buddy is a strange concept that actually works better in practice than you'd imagine. The tilting screen helps make poses visible as the model on-screen demonstrates, and there is a nice recorded voice throughout each routine that explains each step of the pose. As you practice more frequently, you will rely on the voice over the visuals, but there is a nice mode in Let's Yoga that showcases each pose and allows you to pause the action and rotate the model 360-degrees. This is really important for people that need more time to work their way into a pose and especially for beginners that need tips and ways to simplify a pose. My gripe is that the simplified pose instructions aren't recorded in the voiceover that plays during the normal routine. Beginners need to know how to modify poses to allow for less flexibility, but the main routines don't provide any direction along these lines. The information is here, but buried too deeply. This is a misstep considering the demographic that is likely to pony up for Let's Yoga is probably not comprised of yoga veterans. The motion capture that went into creating the pose demonstrations is excellent and you can modify several of the visual elements to fit your personal style. It occurred to me at some point while playing that the tall, skinny ladies shown in the game are only representative of the 1% of the population that won the genetic lottery and became fashion models. It would have been nice to see more "real" body types on display here...
Gameplay: This isn't a game in the true sense, so it's hard to define how you play it. I respect the folks that created this for not throwing in some mini-game to pander to folks without an interest in really doing yoga. If you don't like yoga or have some interest, Let's Yoga is not for you. This is an exercise tool, as surely as a yoga mat or block might be. It helps you by giving some structure to your workout and informing you of the proper technique, but most of the time Let's Yoga is operational, your DS will be on the floor, a chair, or a table. You will be elsewhere on the floor, standing, or in a chair. Doing yoga. Let's Yoga is organized around several workout types that are pre-programmed and you can customize a workout once you know what you are doing. There is a point system accrued from successive workout sessions, telling you and the game what you are able to do. Each time you complete a workout, your score increases slightly and you can subsequently open up new content in the game. This content is generally limited to new poses, which at first are beyond your capabilities. The Master's Lesson Mode is a good place to start - here you work through a specific sequence of exercises that introduce you to the joys of yoga. After you complete a lesson, you'll want to switch over to Yoga Course Mode and go deeper into the proper form for each pose. If the Master's Lesson is too intense, you can study the pose and make necessary modifications through the Pose List selection. Yoga Course is the "meat" of the game after you hit a wall in Master's Lesson or complete everything. Short Set provides a workout built around your specific needs, which may be as wide-ranging as sleepiness, sleeplessness, or constipation (not kidding). There are many therapeutic reasons behind why people do yoga, and it's neat to see this component built into the game. Random Yoga is a selection you'll rarely make since there are so many easy customizations possible without just going random. Chair Yoga is just like it sounds, great for the office or for those of us that don't like all that walking around that comes from leaving a seated position... My Yoga is the yogi mix-master, for the person that wants to roll his or her own routine. If you can't find some brand of happiness in this wide array of options, please switch to a simpler sport like curling.
Difficulty: Let's Yoga is considerably more difficult for those of us with the flexibility of a steel girder. I'm in this category, so I relied heavily on the tips and recommendations for simplifying each pose. I mentioned earlier that there is some poor design in Let's Yoga with not including simplified poses as a voice track or at least displaying simplified instruction-text during the pre-programmed routines. The game does a nice job of stressing the importance of slow, deliberate movement to help people avoid injury. The fact remains that following the model on the screen will not work for some folks. A variation showing modified poses visually would have made this a much more accessible title. The other concern from a difficulty standpoint is the point system. Because technically you earn points just for watching an exercise routine, it is possible (although I'm not sure why anyone would do this) to open up advanced poses before you are really ready to handle them. At the point where you are in over your head, it is possible to get hurt, even with "slow and deliberate" as your watchwords. Parents should be careful about this with children that may not appreciate the potential to overstretch and get injured.
Game Mechanics: The control for the game is handled through some very simple clicks with the stylus. Let's Yoga is more like watching a yoga instructional video, where you press "Play" and get down to work, than a traditional game. There aren't a lot of complex controls to worry about. One piece of the game that involves more than a start/stop control scheme is the portion where you design your own workout. This requires a little programming skill - no, just kidding. You do have to tap out a sequence of poses that appear on-screen in a timeline format. You'll see the total time for the workout and you can save this sequence of poses for a later date. The other place where Let's Yoga includes a more complex control scheme is where you can browse poses and see them demonstrated individually. At any time during the demo, you can pause and rotate the model. You can also change the view to a silhouette that highlights which muscle or muscle group is being stretched during the pose. It is also in this mode where you can find out simplified variations and tips for each pose, as text on the screen. The final score on Let's Yoga is indicative of it not being a piece of unconventional software for the DS and having some flaws in its execution. I can recall a yoga "game" for PS2 or XBox years ago that was decent but suffered from similar problems, and Wii Fit is testing the waters in different fashion to see if people will buy into their gaming platforms as cross-over exercise devices. I'm not sold on the value of a title like Let's Yoga; DVDs are more portable and don't need to be recharged, and you can get a real live person demonstrating yoga with a video iPod, which provides a better exercise experience than Let's Yoga. High marks for effort, but this probably won't spark a new portable gaming revolution...
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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